Dominion Oak Barrel Stout Chocolate Cake

It should come as no surprise that my first foray into the world of baking was inspired by the world of beer.  I recently tapped a keg of Dominion Oak Barrel Stout at home here and have been enjoying it for the past couple weeks.  After you become well acquainted with a keg of beer you have to find ways to spice up your relationship.  With the Stout I started pouring some black and tans with a lager.  Then I moved to a bruised apple with some Woodchuck.  Then I started googling and came across a recipe for a Chocolate Stout Cake on epicurious.  (Recipe Here)  The feedback was promising.  Web foodies seemed to really enjoy this cake so I suggested it to my lovely girlfriend, and super baker, Lexi, and she was intrigued and insisted we make it happen.

We basically just halved the recipe, skimped the sugar by a half cup (who wants it that sweet?  jeez), used dark cocoa powder (leftover from the Trappist homebrew awhile back), and generously poured a heaping cup of Stout into the saucepan.  Thirty-five minutes later we were kickin back and enjoying our fruits.  (With draft stouts to compliment of course).

Resounding success.  Crack a beer and lick your screen below.  (All photo credits to Lexi)

35 minutes later:

Chocolately, creamy, goodness:

Ice cream icing job:

First slice of chocolately stoutnicity:

Magazine centerfold/Cake Porn:

There's a lot of cake (and beer) left to enjoy....after that, the stout is headed for a big batch of Eddie's special chili!

Cheers!

Trappo Chocco

Brewed up a batch of a chocolate Trappist Ale with Ed this week.

Here he is cleaning the carboy, getting his swirl on.  You can see that he's worn his Battery Brewing shirt for the occasion.  You can also see he's real excited about cleaning it.  We took multiple takes to make sure we captured his smile.

I think this is the greenest I've ever seen a mid-boil hop addition.

And Ed goes and ruins it by adding dark brown to it.  He got a hold of some dark cocoa for the batch.

Sugar crystals added in order to pump up the sugar content of the beer.

And we're done...with the exception of the broken hydrometer...I can't believe I broke it...it is partially the blame of a loose cap on its holder and that Ed and I were putting a dent in the Dogfish Head Punkin' keg we acquired the week before.  We at least got the reading before I managed to break it, though I don't have the replacement one yet to check the final gravity.  I guess we'll just have to guess based on how tipsy a 6 pack makes us.